Monday, September 20, 2010

The art of making Murukku


The art of making Murukku

Seer murukku is an important item in Tamil weddings. During the wedding many sweets and savoury items are given by the bride’s family to the groom’s and murukku with five or seven rounds (concentric circles) have a prime place.  At the Rameswaram wedding, after Nischayadartham, along with all the seer, murukku made in different patterns were displayed. I was so impressed by the display that I did a mini interview with the lady who had made them. This lady, Mrs K J Amirthavalli, is from Madurai and says that she has been doing seer bakshanam for marriages on a contract for a long time.



 
She had made these beautifully shaped murukkus for this wedding with so much interest more because both the bride and groom’s family were personally known to her.



There were murukkus made in the shape of sari, veshti (dhoti), bag, an animal, baskets, cup, betel leaves, banana, flowers, kolams, lamp and what not. There were also the regular round shaped ones with the name of the bride and groom written in English and Tamil.  She so innocently asked me if she had spelt the names right! Though she does not do all the seer sweets and savouries for weddings any more, I am sure she will do this kind of murukku for weddings on order.

 

1. Sari & Dhoti                               
2. Basket


3. Flower

4. Cup

5. Kolam



6.Lamp

7. One more basket

 8. One more Kolam
9. Another flower
10. Leaf



 11. Betel leaves, betel nut and banana
For betel nut she has used coffee powder made into a paste!



12. Bridegroom's name

13. Bride's Name

14. Mirror


 15.Hand fan

 16. Bride's name in Tamil

17. Bridegroom's name in Tamil

18. Floral pattern


 19. Animal







14 comments:

  1. Super murukku! superior pics. Veluthu vangitel both of you! Fabulous!

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  2. enakkum venum! i was super livid with amma and radhoo too, they made murukku for KJ this year, naan irundha ivalo varushama pannama! Anyway- adding to agenda, when i visit, I want to go to *some* kalyanam where we'll get that big 5 round murukku. With yellow laddoo :) :) naaku oorification happening.

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  3. maami solli tharuvala? how fabulous!

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  4. It is a great art,how many years our Valli mami had made seer murukku in my mother Rajalakshmi Narasimhan's house,we always used to admire the valli mami made as her suthu was very good,sharp.But this mami is really very creative & you have done a very good job of photographing them,good job!Thanks Lakshmi.

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  5. Awesome show A'valli Mami! Really superb! No words to express our admiration & appreciation! Profuse thanx to u Lakhsmi. As i told u, both thatha & I enjoy ur blogs,both reading as well as seeing!With lots of luv & affn.
    Dorai Thatha & R'chithi.

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  6. Hi Lakshmi,
    This woman has the creativity to turn the murukus into pieces of art!Kudos to her enthusiasm &artistic ability in making people view them rather than just gulping them -The labour of love is worth a mention & it did excite you too!so much for your perception of viewing this creativity & writing -good work -all the best -Hema Gandhi

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  7. Simply awesome. Never seen such murrukus in my life. I would be visiting Chennai soon, hope I get to taste some ;)

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  8. i have never seen anything of thi sbefore..
    Thanks for sharing..
    superb!!

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  9. simply marvelous post about the crunchy little Murukku...! I love it...! Thank you! Cheers! :-)

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  10. Great Going! should have takenthat maamis no also

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  11. Hi, I am Gayathri; Padmashri's daughter. I've heard about your blog, and wanted to look at it. It is very nice, and you are a very strong writer. This post was very interesting to me. All the baskets were very different and very cool. I have a blog of my own, and it is for school. It uses my school email so, my username is 4 letters of last name and 3 letters of first name; hence, shangay. My blog address is http://21gayathri2010.blogspot.com and another called http://gshankar21.blogspot.com. I hope you can visit them. Thank You, and my personal email is g3shankar@aol.com. Please email me and I will respond back. Bye for now!

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  12. This is Praveen

    I need to purchase these designs for my wedding

    Kindly give the contact details of Mrs K J Amirthavalli

    Thanks

    ReplyDelete
  13. This is Mallika Arjunan

    I need to purchase Seer Patchanam

    Kindly give the contact details of Mrs K J Amirthavalli

    Thanks

    ReplyDelete
  14. This is Mallika Arjunan

    I need to purchase Seer Patchanam

    Kindly give the contact details of Mrs K J Amirthavalli

    Thanks
    Mallika Arjunan
    9171524243

    ReplyDelete